Trivia / The Disney Afternoon

• Channel Hop: Several of the series starting with Darkwing Duck also aired on Saturday mornings (often on ABC); Gummi Bears had started on NBC, then moved to ABC paired up with The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, moving to this block concurrently. Doug also started as a Nickelodeon show before Disney bought it.
  • Also happened to the shows in syndication, when Disney began feuding with Fox — see, the Fox O&O stations, along with many of their affiliates, had carried DuckTales from the beginning, along with Rescue Rangers. Then Disney bought Los Angeles' channel 9 after their previous owner, RKO General, lost the license^note short version: RKO General was incredibly corrupt and their parent company General Tire was no better, and planned to move DuckTales and Rescue Rangers there. Barry Diller, head of Fox and former colleague of then-Disney head Michael Eisner (when they both worked at Paramount Pictures), was pissed-off at what Disney had done and ordered all of the Fox O&Os and affiliates to dump Disney content ASAP. Most followed his lead, but not all of them; in some cases, this resulted in a drawn-out transfer, like in Philadelphia where WTXF-29, the Fox affiliate then owned by Paramount (and currently owned by Fox) continued to run some, but not all, of the shows until their contracts ran out; cross-town rival WPHL-17 picked up the new shows starting with Darkwing Duck, but it took them some time to air the "entire" Disney Afternoon.
• Invisible Advertising: The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show was barely promoted outside of the requisite on-air promos and a pasta line by Franco American, especially compared to Gargoyles, which was given wall-to-wall promotion.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Of the shows listed in the main page, only half of them have DVD releases - and only one of them is complete (used to be only if you were a member of the Disney Movie Club; two if you consider The Goliath Chronicles to be Fanon Discontinuity, though the previously exclusive release have since gotten non-Disney Movie Club releases). As of this writing, all but Aladdin: The Series and The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show (and a couple of banned episodes of Darkwing Duck and TaleSpin) are presented and accounted for on Disney+.
• Recycled Script: "Allowance Day" in DuckTales and "The Time Bandit" in TaleSpin.
• Recycled: The Series: Aladdin: The Series, Timon & Pumbaa, and Hercules: The Animated Series which are based on Aladdin, The Lion King, and Hercules, respectively.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show was cancelled after only one season despite decent ratings.
  • The block in general slowly became more of an afterthought, as the syndication market for kids shows began to go downhill, and Disney bought ABC, starting One Saturday Morning. By 1997, it was nameless and reduced to 90 minutes in length, with either reruns of older shows or shows airing concurrently on ABC or elsewhere making up the content.
• What Could Have Been:
  • This blog post details shows intended for the block that never got made.
    • Maximum Horsepower (a show about old Disney character Horace Horsecollar being kidnapped by aliens having thought he was the savior they desperately needed).
    • The Magic Kingdom Show? A show based around the Walt Disney World Theme parks, Where a little boy & a little girl learn that a magical replica of their favorite Disney theme park exists high up in the clouds. The theme park rides include Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, and Cinderella Castle.
    • Speaking of Disney theme park shows there was one based on proposed based on Critter Country where The Country Bear Jamboree would interact with the characters from Splash Mountain with Brer Fox as the main antagonist.
    • A planed series was based around the character Thumper from Bambi titled Thumper’s Thicket, It bares a similarity to what would become the Disney Bunnies series of books.
  • Mickey Mouse was supposed to have a show of his own called Mickey and the Space Pirates, but prior to 1999, Disney wouldn't allow their mascot in any shows or movies unless the final product was absolutely perfect.

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